In general, Halloween has always been kind of a mixed bag for me. I’m not fond of horror things and I’m really shy so I especially stopped trick or treating rather early, but one of the things I’ve noticed is around Halloween is a time where nearly anything I play or even just see friends playing may have some kind of Halloween or Fall Event. There’s almost always something, some limited kind thing to try and do as much as you can or grind out.
And honestly, it’s exhausting. Ignoring general grind fests over a limited amount of time as you do the same thing over and over, hoping to either finally get what you want or save up enough to do so, sometimes there’s just limits of how much you can do and the argument for why this is will always be “It’s not fun to finish everything on the first day”… but that isn’t the case for everyone and I think it’s a huge disservice how often so many games force people to play in this very specific structure. And you know what? If there’s no time limit, maybe people can work with that to some extent, but when there’s a time limit, that just… does not work as well.
People always chock it up to impatience when someone may prefer to finish things in one go, but that isn’t always the case either. Personally, I have a handful of health-related issues and have good and bad days– some days I’m super productive and can get a lot done. Other days, I’m a sick mess and just completely useless to the point where I can’t even grab a log-in bonus on my phone (here’s another frustrating thing– the problem with log-in streaks and missing out on special bonuses due to missing a single day).
So when I’m playing through and a game tells me “Oh, yeah, you already did as much as you can today or you have to wait this very long timer to progress any more now”, it really sucks. This is the main reason I don’t have any kind of stream/video/writing schedule because between my own health and random family antics, I can’t predict when I’ll be good to go or get things done. And if I could get it out of the way on a day where maybe I don’t feel like trash and then focus on the next game/site/whatever is holding yet another event, it sure is a lot easier than stressing trying to balance multiple things at once on top of however I may be doing.
At this point, delaying content or how much you can do is often used as an excuse to justify with lack of content. And the thing is… there doesn’t always need to be tons of content. Filler time doesn’t make up for actual game time. There are other things to do in most games. Not engaging in an event constantly shouldn’t be considered such hearsay or lazy.
And people who want to only do a bit a day will still do that. People who can break it up and may not have as much to play will still take their time. But those who can’t for whatever reasons are the ones who constantly end up in this same stupid loop and it’s exhausting to see it still happen.
There’s nothing fun about forcing people to play in the same strict line due to some worry that an event being done quickly makes it forgettable or boring. Especially with limited time things, the only thing letting people play it as much as they personally feel like doing just lessens the chance of people not bothering or getting frustrated.